


A World So Big and Beautiful

by InfaWrit10



Category: Wolf 359 (Radio)
Genre: Gen, My Way of Ending the Series, Spoilers for the end of the podcast, because I couldn’t just leave it THERE
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-02-29
Updated: 2020-02-29
Packaged: 2021-02-27 23:08:53
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,726
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22933831
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/InfaWrit10/pseuds/InfaWrit10
Summary: After three long years, the Hephaestus crew’s weathered boots finally touch the earth again.  As gravity slowly reclaims its hold on them, they must recover the pieces of what their lives used to be, and address the demons they thought they’d left in space.
Comments: 4
Kudos: 18





	A World So Big and Beautiful

**Author's Note:**

> It’s been literal years since the drop of the last episode of Wolf 359, but I just COULD NOT leave it where it was. I wanted to know more! So voila! Here’s this fic! I can finally add a new fandom to my body of work on the archive!
> 
> The number of chapters is tentative for now, and I think it’ll probably be more, but it definitely won’t be more than five.
> 
> I hope you enjoy.

It had been a long three years.

He sat with scotch in one lazy, steadily-withering hand. The stout glass was only supported by the chair arm. There were newspapers everywhere except his lap. Some of them contained articles he’d written—not as many as there used to be.

To the world, this man looked dead. His eyes were sunken, and his mouth was open as he stared beyond the ground. He was fight-less, nothing like he used to be—too tired to move, and too awake to sleep. He’d been here before, stuck sitting in one of his nefariously bad days with no way to his feet.

Fire remembered his eyes for the first time when the lock turned. His mother sometimes came to check on him, but this was eleven o’clock at night; she never came at this hour.

A petite figure stepped in wearing a uniform. She locked the door behind her, and he shot up, thoroughly unstuck.

His mouth now hung open from shock rather than depressive habit. She slowly turned to see an unshaven, lanky mess of a wonderful man.

Her boots clacked along the tiled foyer floor, and she stopped a few feet before the wood boundary line to the living room.

She was still petite, but she was holding herself tall with the military discipline she couldn’t simply lose, with the confidence and comfort of someone coming home from war. She was smiling the smile he remembered, and her eyes were brimming with adoration as tears welled over.

“Hello,” she finally said around a knot in her throat. She would have said something dramatic, something beautiful, and something that she’d rehearsed on the taxi ride over here, but she hadn’t been able to come up with the perfect thing to say. What do you say to the love of your life who thought you were dead?

His tears spilled over. He chuckled around the block in his throat. Mr. Minkowski sprinted to his wife shamelessly, threw his arms around her and allowed his sobs to rack through him.

There they stood, looking like shit and loving each other deeply. While neither was a recent development, they now had the luxury of looking like shit and loving each other  _ on the same planet. _

—

Jacobi was having a sense of deja vu.

Same bar in San Fran, same time, same booze probably, and same post-traumatically-stressed stubbornness on needing a drink. Only this time, Kepler wasn’t going to show up. He was decidedly  _ not _ going to walk through that door and tell him that story about working in the Ukraine that he’d…

Actually never heard.

Through all the time he’d known him, and all the stories he’d rolled his eyes at because  _ oh my god, these can’t possibly be true,  _ Kepler never again mentioned work in the Ukraine.

…

He had to have, right? There couldn’t possibly have been a story that Jacobi never heard from him. He knew every one—made up or otherwise—backwards and forwards, exact  _ wording _ some of them. He absolutely had to have known them all. He couldn't have interrupted the only one he didn’t know. That one was probably made up, but it was still…

He was still...

“Another,” Jacobi insisted.

He’d said it so many times already that his voice was starting to bleed into itself, asking for more before he’d even downed what he asked for.

“Haven’t you had enough?”

There was a different barkeep than last time, but they all said the same thing, so that didn’t really count for anything, did it?

“Another,” he requested bitterly.

This one was young, so he figured he could probably break him into being a pushover. A few sharp words, maybe a promise of a good tip at the end, if he behaved how he wanted. It wouldn’t be hard at all. Especially not on such a bad day.

He didn’t want to have ended up here. He was coming home from… somewhere. It didn’t really matter where. And if he could afford to live in San Francisco, then that meant he wasn’t able to afford anything else, so he had to walk. Of course, since they’d had problems with each other historically, Mother Nature felt the sudden urge to fuck with him a little today. One moment partly-cloudy skies, the next, an unpredicted cats-and-dogs rainstorm. Having been cold to begin with, this new soaked state did wonders for him.

He took shelter in the nearest place, and once he’d found himself inside, he immediately wished he’d checked the damn sign.

He’d reverted back to his old habits too quickly.

“Another,” he said again, and the—basically a kid gave him a please-don’t-make-me-do-this look as he did as he was told.

Behind him, the sound of a shutting door and water subtly patting to the wood floor in droplets sounded.

The bartender looked relieved that he might have someone else,  _ anyone else,  _ to wait on.

The new guy took a spot two seats down from Jacobi. He wore a green hoodie, soaked into a forest shade by the rain. He was quite obviously younger than Jacobi, though not by much, it seemed. Maybe early-, possibly mid-thirties. He had facial hair, no doubt to compensate for the baby face he had going on. He slicked his hair back, but there was one section that swung in wild fashion off to the side. He had plump lips, and it really and truly seemed like they’d never been chapped.

Jacobi weighed his odds at eight out of ten this guy was gay. His skin was too clear, his nails were too perfect, his fashion sense was too clean-cut, and—call him lonely and wasted—but Jacobi was picking up a signal that said he couldn’t be anything else.

It might’ve been because he dared to hope he was.

New Guy told the bartender that he’d have, “Just water please,” and the bartender responded with a lame joke about there being enough of it outside.

Jacobi was hung up on his voice. It was sweet-pitched, and sour in an inexplicable way. It was also deeper than he’d expected it to be.

_ Oh, I wanna break you. _

The thought was powerful, and a little too needy for his taste.

New Guy met his eyes, both pairs sunken in and wandering over the unshaven avenues of the other’s face.

Jacobi didn’t dare look away, though the color already present in his cheeks turned a little darker.

—

When Isabel Lovelace set her mind to anything, god damn it, it was going to get done. God would fear her if she had any interest in killing Them.

So, she did exactly what she told Renee she was going to do, and what she’d set her mind on all those years ago, the  _ first  _ time she promised herself she’d get home: Go somewhere warm where no one knew her.

She sunbathed and sighed, because this was living, relaxing, refreshing, new again. Given her circumstances, she had fully expected that there would be  _ some _ obstacle once she touched down on Earth that would prevent her from doing that. A small part of her told her that she wasn’t out of the woods yet, and an even smaller part told her that she never would be. But ever since her feet first kissed the ground, she had done what she wanted, when she wanted, and nothing had combusted yet. So, she enjoyed her time while she still had it, when no one was annoying her about what she might or might not have survived.

This was the life. Here, no one had any reason to interrupt her. Except maybe the cabana boy who swung by with drinks every now and again.

—

Gustav Holst’s “The Planets” broke through the speakers and the spell of silence over the quiet home. The only noises beyond that were the sounds of the world waking up—birds, bugs, the occasional car doing twenty-five on a quiet road—and a tired man’s snores lifting into the air in steady melody from the bedroom. The sun was streaming in today through the blinds and glass doors, and the music wound its way through the air of the home.

It gently roused the deep sleeper, who gave one great powerful yawn as he stretched away the weight of slumber.

“Eiffel?”

“Mornin’, baby,” Eiffel said as he sat up, voice thick from disuse. He glanced over at the clock, and his eyes grew wide. “... Is that time right?” Eiffel asked, his unsure, high voice coming in.

“Yes. This is when you told me to wake you up. Remember?” Hera asked, a push behind that last word.

Then the tidal wave struck his shores.

“Annie.” The ex-communications officer looked up directly into the camera on the ceiling. “Thanks, Hera.”

“It’s what I do,” she told him.

He launched into a morning routine: breakfast and coffee, brush teeth, shower, then clothes (but maybe not for a little while—a towel’s just as good).

He didn’t have to be out the door, not for another two hours, but he wanted to be.

It beat pacing.

“Eiffel… Are you okay?” Hera asked delicately.

He stared at the rug in the living room for a bit, pensive. “I just don’t know what to say to her. And I keep thinking like… Like maybe I…  _ would _ have, even though I don’t…  _ think _ I would have? Is that right?” He sighed. “I just don’t know how this is gonna go.”

“You’ll be fine. You’ve lived through worse,” Hera reminded him.

He recognized she had a point. He knew there was a fighter quality in him, but ever since they’d landed back on Earth, he couldn’t help but wonder if maybe that died with his memories.

Having Hera wired into his house helped immensely; if you had someone to talk to, you could neglect your demons. But she had also helped him piece things together, especially at first, when she had just been installed and still knew the layout of his own house better than he did. Sometimes, she also added to his colorful commentary as he recollected his DVD collection, which made the process a bit easier.

Eiffel grunted in response, then moved to get dressed.

Once his t-shirt was on, he looked himself in his mirror eyes, leaned into the sink, and said, “Showtime.”

**Author's Note:**

> Wanna see what happens next? Be sure to leave a comment or drop some kudos to motivate me! It is much appreciated.


End file.
